"W-where am I?" Akira asked the blonde bear-man, whose name was shown to her as simply [Rudolf], her teeth chattering in the cold.
Glancing around, there were lush blankets of freshly fallen snow as far as her eyes could see, spread across a quiet forest: piled on the ground and atop fallen logs or protruding rocks, mushroom-coated stumps, or along the spiked branches of blackened bare trees.
"You were trying to cross the border, right?" Rudolf said. "Walked right into that Cultivator ambush, same as us, and that mage over there."
"Huh?" 'People were cultivating out in the snow, and they laid an ambush?'
